Plans for £100bn wind power programme called into question

Plans to power every home in Britain with electricity generated by 6,000 new
wind turbines around the coast have been called into question due to a
shortage of engineers.

The awards are due to be made official by the Crown Estate by the end of next month, with the first turbines entering the water by 2014Photo: Reuters

By Louise Gray and Rowena Mason

7:30AM GMT 08 Jan 2010

The Prime Minister is due to announce on Friday which power companies have won the right to build the massive wind farms, mostly in the North Sea.

The awards are due to be made official by the Crown Estate by the end of next month, with the first turbines entering the water by 2014

In a bid to boost Labour's industry credentials before the election, he is expected to say that the £100bn programme could generate more than 25GW of energy by 2020 - enough to power every home in Britain - and up to 70,000 new jobs.

But energy experts questioned whether such an ambitious project is possible because the National Grid may not be able to cope with the peaks and troughs in energy caused by reliance on wind.

Behind the scenes, energy companies are also nervous about the logistical and financial challenges of construction, that will start from 2014. Dozens of smaller projects – including the London Array – have been delayed because of funding problems in recent years.

Paul Willson, of PB Power, said the turbines, that will be bigger than anything around the UK today, will be a huge challenge because they will be in deeper water than existing projects.

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There is already a shortage in "laying barges" that erect the turbines at sea and can only work in the summer months.

Mr Willson said there was a shortage in mechanical and civil enginners with the specialised skills to manufacture and install large number of turbines offshore. He also said there are not enough electrical engineers able to upgrade the grid so that the electricity can be transmitted from offshore to land.

"The resources we need to build these things in time will be huge and I suspect that the reality is it will be very challenging to find the equipment and skills to put the foundations in place never mind the infrastructure," he said.

John Constable, research director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said the grid could not take the peaks in energy when the wind is blowing.

"The truth is noboby has a clue how to create a grid with that much fluctuating energy," he said.

There were also concerns about whether the UK would gain many jobs after the only turbine manufacturing plant in the country, run by Danish firm Vestas in the Isle of Wight, closed last year. Unlike other countries the Crown Estate has not insisted that a certain proportion of component parts are sourced domestically.

However, in a speech to launch the programme Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will insist that the Government will not make the same mistakes as it did with the onshore wind industry by failing to develop a dometic manufacturing base.

He will say that Britain is facing a similar sort of challenge to developing the North Sea in the 1970s, when the country had to create a completely new supply chain, and award small grants to component part makers in Teesside and Scotland.

Also, the Crown Estate, the government body which owns the UK's seabed, will be travelling the country to inform regional development authorities and companies what components will be needed so that British industry can benefit from the construction programme.

Environment groups insist that developments in technology will make it much easier to construct offshore turbines in future, while demand in Asia will drive down costs.

The plan to develop nine zones around the coast will be the most ambitious of its kind in the world.

A source at a major energy company said investors are nervous about putting money into the project as the Government has not signalled how much subsidies it will give to wind power up until 2020. There are also concerns about whether further scoping work will reveal that some sites are not suitable and gaining planning permissions to build.

Andy Cox, energy partner at KPMG, the accountancy firm, said the majority of any new manufacturing jobs would be created overseas. "In general, parts are primarily manufactured in continental Europe and further afield, rather than the UK, and, with overseas factories well-established, it is unlikely that there will be a dramatic shift in traditional manufacturing jobs to the UK."

But John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace, said it was an opportunity for Britain to become a world leader.

“Throughout its history Britain has shown the determination and ingenuity to tackle the great industrial challenges of each era. In the 21st century these qualities are being called on once again, to enable the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable sources of energy," he said.